Weird and Wondrous Cars of the 2016 Paris Auto Show

Formula Giol Sport Leisure Trike

Luciano Giol is an engineer and tinkerer with lots of experience in electric vehicles. He spent some time in California working on Sunrayce solar race cars and he even returned to France and built a solar race car. Now he's built the vehicle of his dreams in prototype form, and is looking for partners to potentially build the vehicle at a price of about 25,000. A production model would get different bodywork crafted from carbon fiber instead of aluminum panels formed on a press break and riveted together—though this look does convey a radar-stealth fighter-jet look. Power comes from a pair of 50-hp AC electric motors drawing from a 28-kWh battery. Accelerating the 1,870-pound rig to 62 mph takes 10 seconds en route to a 100-mph top speed (at which point those aggressive wings start to really kick in the downforce). It has four wheels, but in Europe if the front two are closer than 18 inches together they count as one, so it conforms to motorcycle regulations and uses motorcycle controls, augmented by a brake pedal. We admire Giol's passion a lot—his trike design's aesthetics a tad less.